


No Such Thing As Vampires

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Foxtrot [78]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-05-27 16:51:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6292363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: <i>Any, Any, No Such Thing As Vampires (Moonlight).</i> Evan Lorne's first time home on leave since he shipped out for Atlantis. Outsider POV. Set season 4.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Such Thing As Vampires

Natalia Lorne didn't know what to make of her brother, who was home on leave for the first time in a year. She hadn't believed it one bit when he said he was getting stationed in Colorado Springs on a deep space telemetry project at NORAD, because he always came home on leave looking haunted, and staring at telescope readings all day couldn't have been that horrifying (and why would they need a geological surveyor anyway?). Something about his posting had changed, and now he only had two weeks home every year. That had to be some kind of labor law violation or something. He assured her that he was given regular "Sundays", or days off, but she didn't think they were doing much good.

He was thinner than she remembered, cheekbones more pronounced. And when she peeked into his sketchbook, it was full of people she didn't recognize, in uniforms she didn't recognize, with no name patches and the occasional flag patches from foreign countries. When she did get emails from him, they were always brief and full of good cheer, with nothing in them to indicate location ("nice day") or who he was stationed with. He commented on the food, how the goals of the "mission" was progressing. Paintings he was working on. Movies he watched at movie night. But nothing substantive. She couldn't tell if it was him being deliberately obtuse or the military censoring what he sent.

But he was sitting on the couch and playing video games with Mikey, and he was smiling and subtly letting Mikey win, and maybe he was just tired. Long commute, he'd joked. Jet-lag. Gabby was curled up on the other side of Evan, scribbling away in a little notebook of her own. Neither she nor her brother had inherited the Lorne gene for art, but if Gabby practiced enough, she could gain the necessary skills over time. Natalia and Evan knew, more than anyone, that art was a skill that required endless hours of practice. Natalia thought of Evan's sketchbook, which was the closest thing to a journal he'd ever have, and was glad he still had time to draw, wherever he was stationed.

Mom would be coming over tomorrow night to make a huge dinner to celebrate her baby boy coming home. They'd take a drive out to the commune, where the others would be painfully polite to him until he rolled up his sleeves and buckled down to help paint and plant and weed, and as long as he said nothing about where he'd been or what he'd done or showed even a hint of his dog tags, it would be all right.

Tonight was for Evan to relax. He had no children of his own, and even before his posting to who-knew-where he'd had an awful track record with girlfriends. He occasionally had unexpected but unreasonably long delays on base, getting stuck in one lock-down procedure or another, and none of the women he'd dated had tolerated it. Despite his one steady relationship through college (that ended when he shipped out after graduating ROTC), Natalia suspected his relationship failures had less to do with his job and more to do with the fact that he was dating women, but she wasn't sure. She'd caught him kissing Chad McDonald once, when he was sixteen, and he knew she knew, but they'd never said anything about it. He adored Mikey and Gabby like they were his own, and they missed him fiercely when he was gone, sent him endless numbers of emails with their awkward little drawings attached, and he wrote back with praise for each one.

When the timer went off – Natalia had strict rules about how much video game time the kids were allowed – Evan made sure he and Mikey were at a decent save point before letting Mikey shut off the gaming console.

"Time for bed," Evan said. Natalia, who'd had to deal with the kids' excitement of their beloved uncle's return all day, was more than glad to let him handle the majority of getting the kids to bed. Gabby put away her art supplies after a gentle reminder, but needed no prompting to brush her teeth. Mikey needed a bit of a firmer nudge, but seemed content to brush his teeth if Evan was doing it at the same time. Natalia came and stood in the doorway while Evan tucked Gabby and Mikey into their beds.

She knew he'd made Major, was a commander of soldiers, but he'd always been a little soft with those he loved, and Mikey would try every trick in the book to extend his bedtime.

"Good night. Sleep well, dream well," Evan murmured, echoing what their mother had always said, and he leaned down to kiss his niece and nephew good night.

"Sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite," Gabby said, and Evan laughed softly.

"She means vampires," Mikey piped up. "Vampires bite at night."

Gabby, who'd had an unfortunate encounter with a vampire movie the other night, whimpered and tugged her blankets up to her chin.

"Mikey," Natalia said warningly.

"Right, Uncle Evan?" Mikey asked. "Vampires come out at night."

Something unreadable crossed Evan's face, but then he smiled and ruffled Gabby's hair gently. "Don't worry, kiddo. There's no such thing as vampires. And if there were, you know I'd protect you from them, right?"

Gabby nodded. "Thanks, Uncle Evan."

"Dream well." Evan stood up and left the room, closed the door softly behind him.

He'd waited till he turned away from the kids to let his mask slip, but he was pale and shaking. Natalia grasped his chin, peered into his eyes.

"Evan, what's wrong?"

He shook his head, stepped away from the bedroom so the kids couldn't hear.

Natalia knew that most of the other moms and kids on the commune had disdained Evan's hope to be a soldier because they thought he'd become another baby-killer, like the soldiers who'd fought in Vietnam. They'd been horrified when Mom married a Vietnam vet, but they'd come around a bit once he embraced life on the commune, eschewed his former soldier ways. And then he'd killed himself.

Mom had never wanted Evan to become a soldier because she didn't want him to see what his father had, and that was why she'd never told him that his father was a soldier, that his desire fly and be brave and save people was in his blood, that he wasn't the odd child out for no reason growing up. Evan just knew his father had loved his mother, and he'd died before Evan was born.

"Evan?" Natalia asked.

He shook his head again, and his face crumpled, and then he stumbled into her arms, sobbing. She held him, rocked him gently, felt her shirt grow damp, and thought, _Deep space telemetry my ass._ She had no idea what had triggered this, and she wasn't sure she even wanted to try to figure it out, but she remembered the look on his face when Gabby asked about vampires, and she filed it away for later.

And she brought it back out again when the news started talking about a Navy Blockade just outside of San Francisco Bay, and aliens called Wraith who had wanted to come to Earth and feast on all of the humans by sucking out their life-force. And she watched the news stories and saw familiar faces, first just images in a sketchbook, now animated and alive with names – John Sheppard, Rodney McKay, the alien woman Teyla – and she wondered if Evan would finally get more than two weeks at home.


End file.
